Prosecutors summoned former major league baseball player David Segui to the witness stand to combat suggestions by Clemens’ defense lawyer Rusty Hardin that McNamee fabricated allegations and evidence against Clemens to successfully avoid prosecution in the baseball doping scandal.

Segui testified about a telephone conversation that he had with Clemens’ long-time fitness trainer in 2001 in which McNamee confided that he had saved syringes that he had used to inject Clemens and other baseball players with human growth hormone at the behest of his wife Eileen.

“I could tell he was venting, frustrated and stressed out,” Segui testified under oath in response to questioning by prosecutor Gilberto Guerrero, Jr. “He mentioned that his relationship with Roger Clemens had put stress on their married life.”

“I’ve kept some darts (short needles for human growth hormone),” Segui recalled McNamee telling him. “I knew there were multiple players because he mentioned the plural so I knew it was multiple players. He never mentioned names.”

Segui added: “He said she had raised the idea of keeping evidence.”

Hardin had pummeled McNamee during a punishing cross-examination last week with claims that the New York fitness expert concocted his insistence that he saved medical waste in response to demands by his wife Eileen that he retain evidence as a potential insurance policy against becoming the fall guy in baseball’s doping scandal.

Hardin insisted that McNamee changed his story about his motivation for keeping medical waste.

U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton cleared the way for Segui’s testimony with a ruling that the 17-season major league player could testify about McNamee’s claims of retaining so-called “darts” from the injections.

Walton said he would permit admission of the additional testimony in response to prosecutors’ request to “rehabilitate Mr. McNamee’s testimony.”

The ruling handed prosecutors an opportunity to bolster McNamee’s credibility with presenting testimony that he did not fabricate the collection of needles, syringes and vials to appease federal investigators in 2007.

Clemens, 49, a seven-time Cy Young Award pitching star who played for four major league baseball teams over 24 seasons, faces six felony counts of lying to Congress for sworn testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in 2008 in which he denied using anabolic steroids or human growth hormone.

Clemens claims McNamee injected him with shots of vitamin B12 and the anesthetic lidocaine and not performance enhancing drugs.